Website planning & design

Choosing a corporate website design partner

Compare partners against a shared brief, a real content sample and an explicit delivery scope. A homepage concept alone provides limited evidence of a team's suitability.

Start with the visitors and the decisions they need to make. A buyer may be checking product suitability, a procurement team may need documentation, and a distributor may need to confirm regional support. Those tasks give both sides a useful basis for evaluating design proposals.

Write a brief that supports decisions

Describe the business context, audiences, observable problems and required content. Replace a broad request such as 'make the site feel premium' with specific issues: inconsistent photography, unclear headings or hard-to-find evidence.

  • Identify three priority visitor tasks.
  • Supply brand guidelines, product material and publishable project information.
  • Separate launch requirements from later improvements.
  • Name the budget owner, reviewers, content owners and implementation partner.

Compare the reasoning

Ask each team to organize the same real content sample and explain the structure, mobile reading order and reusable components. When reviewing case studies, establish which work the team actually delivered. A displayed client logo does not establish responsibility for an entire project.

Define collaboration and change control

Record who supplies material, consolidates feedback and approves each stage. Keep decisions in a shared project record with owners and dates. For multilingual work, assign responsibility for translation, terminology and market-specific facts.

Validate a representative slice

Before expanding across the site, agree on navigation, one representative business page and a small component set. Assess whether they help a visitor understand the offer and whether the system can support further pages within the agreed technical constraints.

Must a partner provide a free homepage concept?
No. Review relevant work, methods and scope first. If a custom trial is useful, agree on its cost, boundaries and permitted use.
What if the commission covers interface design only?
Identify the developer, content source, technical constraints, delivery formats and acceptance process before design begins.

Website design notes

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